lundi, octobre 16, 2006

It may be Monday if you wake up, look at your alarm clock, and wonder whether your state of being falls into the category of "sick." I was so tempted to call in sick, but I had no good reason. My body was still recovering from that whole "you stayed up till WHEN?" thing. I think doing it two days in a row was what really re-set my circadian clocks.

Anyway, I eventually dragged myself to work, dragged myself around work, and then dragged myself home. Work itself was mercifully straightforward (which is not to say that it wasn't busy).

Last saturday, I had bought a package of "bourguignon beef," which is essentially huge cubes of stewing beef appropriate for making bœuf bourguignon. This meant, of course, that I needed to make the bœuf bourguignon tonight. In retrospect, I'm going to limit myself to one major, time-consuming recipe every other week, 'cause this took all night.

I took the recipe from the French Wikipedia article, since it provided a "generic" recipe. None of the "special touches" or "à la [chef]" here. Essentially, the recipe involves preparing frying up a bunch of aromatics, some lardons, and some cubed braising-quality (i.e., cheap) beef. Then you toss on a bit of flour (thickening agent), use it to make a roux-like base, then pour in a whole bottle of red wine, some beef (or veal) stock, and boil for 3-4 hours. Luckily, I had a pressure cooker, so 3-4 hours turned into 1-1/2 hours. Then you pull out all the solids from the mixture and put in a casserole dish (meat, veggies, etc) and boil the remaining liquid down to a demi-glace consistency (this took a while). In the meantime, you make glazed pearl onions and butter-sautéed mushrooms (separately). You also cook up some small new potatoes (optional). Then you mix the mushrooms in with the demi-glace and toss them over the beef and veggies. Serve with onions and potatoes. Mmm!!

Anyway, I used too much water for the braising liquid (I was worried about the pressure cooker), I left the onions to cook for too long, and the mushrooms were overcooked. So, I'm going to try it again in a couple of weeks and PHOTOBLOG it like I did my ají de gallina recipe last week. The recipe kept me busy until almost 23h00 that night, so I had a pretty late dinner. But it was delicious. The wonderful thing about pressure cookers and/or braising recipes is that I used approximately 5€ of meat and maybe another 5€ of veggies (5€ more for the side potatoes) and condiments to prepare at least 3 days of fantastic food. Cheap meat can taste delicious with a bit of braising and a lot of time. After this, I can eat pasta and salads for a week and not worry about my protein intake.

At midnight, I realized that the cleaning staff were scheduled to clean my room tomorrow, so I frantically put stuff away and did the dishes. (By the way, bœuf bourguignon creates a lot of dirty dishes.) At about 2am, I finally got into bed, chiding myself for being too much of a night owl for someone with a day job.